Blogging about the books in my life and my life in books

Blogger recognition awards

Evening everyone! I am completely chuffed to have been nominated for Blogger Recognition Award by the lovely Quirky Mads Reads. Getting to know other bloggers is one of the most rewarding things about blogging and this is a really fun way to do it, so thank you.

Here are the rules taken directly from the original post:

“If you are nominated…

Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to. Do some digging if you must! Find those blogs. You cannot nominate yourself or the person who has nominated you.

Write a post to show off your award! Give a brief story of how your blog got started and give a piece or two of advice to new bloggers. Thank whoever nominated you, and provide a link to their blog. List who you’ve nominated in the post.

Make sure to also attach the award itself! (You can do this by right-clicking, saving, and uploading the image above).

Comment on each blog and let them know you’ve nominated them. Provide a link to the award post you created.

Provide a link to the original post on Edge of Night. That way, anyone can find the original guidelines and post if needed, and we can keep it from mutating and becoming confusing! (It happens LOL).”

So thank you to Eve at Edge of Night for creating this award – anything that brings more bloggers together is good in my book.

My blog story

I only started blogging a few months ago so am still finding my feet a little bit, but it’s turned out to be even more fun than I anticipated. I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember, but I also enjoy writing and I realised that it was something I hadn’t done properly for a long time. So for me, the blog is about the joy of sharing my thoughts on books that I’ve enjoyed and hopefully encouraging others to read them too, but also the satisfaction I get from crafting a review or article. What I didn’t imagine was that I would find myself part of an extremely welcoming online community – it’s this social element to blogging that has taken me completely by surprise, but has turned out to be one of the things I love most about it.

Blog tips

As a relative newbie I’m still very much at the stage of needing tips from others as to how to get the best out of blogging, but here are a few thoughts for those of you who are, like me, at the beginning of the road.

Find your own groove! It’s always interesting to look at other blogs to see how others approach it, but it’s so important to find your own voice, your own style, your own blog design and so on and not be too influenced by other people. This is your chance to get a little bit of yourself out there, and above all you want people to see the real you.

Read what you want to read! I suppose this depends a little bit on what kind of blog you want yours to be, but I knew I didn’t want to get caught up in religiously reviewing the latest book that everyone was talking about just because, well, everyone was talking about it. I love reading, but life’s too short to read things because you feel you should have something to say about them – I’d much rather focus on the books I know I would enjoy reading whether I was going to blog about them or not.

Don’t be shy! At first I was a little bit nervous about commenting on other people’s blogs or starting conversations (what if people thought I was some kind of weird stalker person?!) but actually I’ve discovered that most people who blog are doing so because they want to engage with others who share their interests. And I love it when people post on Girl, Reading so I would encourage everyone to get out there and get talking!

Try not to worry about your stats! We all want lots of people to read the articles and reviews into which we’ve put copious amounts of blood, sweat and tears, and at first I was really disheartened to see how few people were connecting with my blog. But what I’ve learned is that it’s a gradual process, and if not many people log on to your website on a particular day, never mind – others days will be better. Social media is the best way of letting other people see that you’re out there and blogging; I use facebook and twitter but I know there are other options too if you’re more technologically astute than me!

There are some brilliant blogs out there that have really inspired me. Here are my nominations for the Blogger Recognition Award; do go and visit them if you get a chance!